


Thrice-Cursed

by Nosferatank



Series: Beingverse [2]
Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: (it’s a Subcon prologue, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Fantasy Politics, Friendship, Gen, Genius Loci, I mean really where else do you think the soul-eating first came from, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse, Non-Consensual Touching, Some dramatic irony, Suicidal Ideation, Worldbuilding, honestly all you need to take from these tags is that Vanessa Is Her Own Warning, it speaks for itself), warning tags will be added where relevant (specifically ch 3)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28296219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nosferatank/pseuds/Nosferatank
Summary: Before the Snatcher was a creature out of legend, he was a child, a teenager, a young man. A human. And it is in a human's nature to love, to hate, tochange.--The fall of the Subcon Margravate. Updates Thursdays.
Relationships: Snatcher & Snatcher's Minions (A Hat in Time), The Florist & Snatcher (A Hat in Time)
Series: Beingverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060283
Comments: 32
Kudos: 44





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to the prequel that has very little bearing on Soul-Stricken that I wrote anyway! I actually started writing this before Soul-Stricken, but it went through at least 3 mutations before arriving at the final product. It is not required to be read in any particular order, you can read either this or Soul-Stricken first. Or you can read it as a Subcon backstory standalone. Versatility is fun!
> 
> It’s VERY important to note that, like the other pre-chapter excerpts in Soul-Stricken, not all of the information in the excerpts is correct- less of it is correct, really, since they’re primarily about historical events that,, from this perspective, happened centuries ago with very few concrete witness reports, if any at _all_. Brigid is a learned historian, but it’s pretty damn hard for anyone to put together an accurate and cohesive narrative out of that mess.
> 
> I expanded the geography of Subcon quite a lot, to give it more realistic proportions for a territory with so much variety. I also did a minor shuffle around and placed Snatcher’s tree way closer to the Subcon Village, rather than in the center of the map. Subcon Village (or rather, the town it used to be) are where Florist and Prince are from, and where most of the story takes place. The other two major population centers of Subcon are the burning building area and the abandoned city-looking place (the one with…. a bunch of headless statues).
> 
> The title of ‘Margrave’ was originally a military title, and they maintained defense at the border provinces. Eventually the title became hereditary in some domains. Picking a title for Subcon’s rulers that has connections to combat was entirely purposeful.

**The Penny War**

_Derisively called as such for its reputation as more of a financial war than a blood-war, the Penny War is the name of the conflict between the various remaining Margravates after the fall of Subcon. With the Paracos dynasty ended permanently at the death of Queen Vanessa, multitudes of potential successors staked their claim on the throne at once- cousins of the queen, or the Margraves of the remaining territories. The claimant with the greatest sway was Queen Maira’s brother, and Queen Vanessa’s uncle, Tiberius._

_Lord Tiberius- who had joined the house of a high-ranking general upon his marriage- had little in terms of land or holdings, after the southernmost portion was flash-frozen in the same magical blizzard that keeps Southern Omnoc uninhabitable to this day. As his claim was based moreso on blood than on power, Tiberius joined the squabble of the Margraves over royal finances and bank holdings._

_What few battles were fought in this war were short, and sparse. The ice-blast erupted during harvest season, and even just the furthest frigid winds were enough to kill a large swathe of crops. The fact that they were being starved as surely as if they were besieged by a great army was what led to the end of the Penny War- a council, rather than a single monarch to rule the kingdom._

_Later expeditions into the southernmost tip of Omnoc and the fallen Subcon Margravate were sent with the finest equipment of the time, and alchemists of great repute. None of them ever returned, and two hundred years later, Omnoc closed off the borders to_ everyone _, deeming it far too much of a safety risk for anybody to explore._

_-Brigid Larsen_

\--

 **313 BFC (Before First Contact)**.

When Camellia met Luka, she had no idea he was the Margravate’s heir, or that he was anything at all besides another youngster playing in the woods under the safety of a childhood mask. 

All her friends had already gone home for the day, leaving her with just her thoughts and, apparently, another child, flailing around the bushes like he was trying to swim away from a river current. 

He whipped his arm back and forth like he was trying to dislodge a clingy bushcat. Only instead of a pet, it was a swatch of tanglevine that refused to release him. After watching him continue to lose his tug-of-war with a plant, Camellia figured he might need some help if he wanted to get home by dark.

“Hullo there!” She called, and giggled when the boy slipped and fell on his rear, vines still curled around his arm. 

“I almost had it…” He groused, and looked up to glare at her as she approached. He seemed a bit younger than her, his violet snake mask still a bit big for his face, and his eyes-

“You look like my grandpa!” Camellia remarked, bending down and pointing at his raptor-yellow eyes with impunity.

Even behind his mask, the scowl was palpable, and the vine curled around him tighter. “I do _not_! I’m eight!”

“No, dummy, your eyes! Grandpa is the same way, and the forest likes him.” The boy relaxed minutely as Camellia pointed at the vines rather than his face, though his shoulders stayed drawn up around his ears defensively. “Although I think it likes you a bit _too_ much.”

“Tell me about it,” he grumped.

Camellia rocked back on her heels. “W-ell, if you can get away from those, then I can introduce you to him!” She peered upwards, where the treetops and the blackening sky were soon to be indistinguishable from each other. “And maybe you can stay the night with us- even grown-ups think the forest at night is scary.”

The boy looked at her like he thought she was a few shrooms short of a fairy ring. “What? But I’ve stayed out at night loads of times, and it’s not scary.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like that for most other people,” Camellia retorted. And privately kept to herself how dumb he sounded. What, like there wasn’t a reason parents made their kids wear masks until they were thirteen? Until the forest knew them to be denizens rather than invaders? “Look, do you want help or not?”

Woefully, he looked at the green fiber that continued to cling to him. “Yes please…” he mumbled, chagrined. 

Camellia pried her way through the bushes and looped her arms around the boy. “Okay… pull!” She heaved back, boots scrabbling on the leaf litter as the combined might of two children strained against the tanglevines. 

A snap, and the breath wheezed out of Camellia’s lungs as the boy landed atop her with a soft grunt. Somewhat disgruntled, she shoved off the little cloaked lump and fumbled to her feet, brushing the dirt off her skirt and watching the boy as he rolled upright and carefully fixed his mask back in place. 

“So? Are you ready to go or not?” Camellia asked imperiously. 

“Um?”

“Y’know, to come meet my grandpa! ‘Cause he also does the whole-” She wobbled her arms in front of her in a gesture that probably didn’t convey the intended ‘connected in every way to a sentient superorganism that eats people’ sentiment. “-forest thing.”

The boy tilted his head and pondered the proposal for about five seconds, which was four seconds more than most children dedicated to such decisions. “Okay, sure!”

Camellia grabbed his arm, ignoring the funny little ‘erk?’ sound he made. “C’mon then! _You_ might be fine, but I don’t want to be out here when the moon comes out, thanks!”

\--

The cabin at the edge of town wasn’t the most impressive thing Luka had ever seen, but the squat building wasn’t what had him gaping. 

It was the forest. Subcon _liked_ this place, allowing thorny trees to grow in impossible trellis shapes and hung with domestic flowers. Like a bundle of nerves, Luka felt the mycelium beneath the property weave thick as bone marrow through the soil, poking up delicate mushrooms like investigative fingers. 

The girl leading him by the hand eeled around tree trunks and sharp bramble, careful to nudge Luka away from the dark thorns invisible in the dusk. Which, he appreciated the sentiment, but he didn’t need her help. It didn’t take much concentration to just _feel_ individual parts of the forest- like closing your eyes, and knowing where your own limbs were. Simple. 

The older girl– whose name he _still_ didn’t know– banged on the heavy oak door twice before shoving it open with all the ferocity a ten-year-old could muster. Once under the shelter of a roof, in a building away from the forest’s eyes– or rather, away from all the forest’s eyes other than him– she pushed her fox mask off her face to rest it jauntily atop her head, revealing rust-splatter freckles and dark eyes. 

Following her lead and turning his mask to rest on the side of his head, he peered around her to scout out the house. The plants were, of course, _everywhere_ , hanging from hooks on the ceiling and creeping across the curtain-rods and perched precariously on the edge of the kitchen table. Sacks of fertilizer stacked in the corner, wide windows thrown open to let in the night air and any questing ivy-fingers looking to monitor the other parts of itself, the parts that walked and talked and bled.

The part that was an old man by the stove, impatiently drumming his fingers along the lacquered countertop while waiting for a kettle to whistle.

At the sound of a slamming door, the old man startled and turned around to face the noise. “Ah, Camellia, I was wondering when you’d-” He cut off, breath stolen. 

Luka cringed away as well– he felt like he was staring at himself, _from_ himself. He gradually opened his eyes to see a rather concerned girl looking at him quizzically, and another pair of bright gold eyes scrutinizing him, like looking at a mirror-shard warped by magic.

“Camellia, dear,” the man said– not unkindly, but with what was probably supposed to be patience, but just felt sarcastic. “What did you bring home this time?”

Luka, somewhat offended by being referred to as a ‘what’, cut off his impending objection when he spotted the ivy creeping closer, and felt the trees swaying in a nonexistent wind outside, as if vacillating between which of their walking-selves to lean towards. 

“He was stuck in the vines, they didn’t want to let him go.” The girl– Camellia?– explained, waving her arms out to the night-shrouded yard. “And yeah, sure, Subcon wouldn’t do anything to him, but it’d still be rude to leave him out there?”

“I would have gotten out eventually,” Luka muttered, his interruption drawing their gazes.

Camellia flung her hands towards him to illustrate her point. “See! And he clearly needs help wrangling the forest! So I thought you two should talk,” She concluded, nodding decisively. 

Sighing at his granddaughter’s ill-thought-out antics, the old man retreated back to the kitchen, lifting the kettle off the stove. “Well, don’t just stand there, boy, sit down. I may as well treat you to tea since you were dragged all the way out here.”

Gingerly, Luka sat where he was directed, the old stool creaking slightly even beneath his negligible weight. Camellia had no such delicacy, hopping onto the chair like she was preparing to ride an unbroken horse and grabbing one of the rough-glazed mugs to shove at her grandfather.

As if following a common routine, the old man poured the tea into her proffered cup, then poured for two others. One, he kept by his elbow. The other, he pushed towards Luka. 

“So,” The old man said pointedly. “Who exactly did my granddaughter drag in?”

“Ah, my name is Luka,” he said, fidgeting.

Pointed silence, and a raised brow from the old man. “And your family name?”

Busted. “Um… it’s Pryce.” Luka admitted, bangs shading his eyes as he looked down at his tea in order to avoid the inevitable courtesies most nobles expected.

“... Camellia, dear. Did you kidnap Margrave Pryce’s second child? And am I to expect estate guards banging on my door looking for you, boy?” 

Whatever previous reaction the girl had was swiftly buried under her indignant protests. “I did _not_! It’s not like I could leave him alone out there, even if the forest wouldn’t let anything happen to him!”

Luka’s shoulders crept up to his ears, delicate candle-warmth seeping into his core. It wasn’t that she thought him defenseless, but it was still… nice, for someone to care, even knowing that he could handle himself. “Um, no, you don’t need to worry about that!” Luka hastily reassured the old man. “It wouldn’t be the first time I stayed the night in the forest– Mother and Father don’t care, so long as I’m home for my tutors, and my sister would _never_ snitch.”

Camellia shot him a concerned look askance, but her attention was recaptured when her grandfather spoke once more.

“Hrm. If that’s the case, you’re welcome to stay the night here. On one condition–” The old man pinned Luka with a _look_ , the kind that brooked no argument regardless of whether or not it was phrased as a question or as a command. “–Do an old man a favor, and visit sometimes, if only to listen to what I have to teach.” He tilted his head to peer outside, odd yellow eyes reflecting a light that did not exist. “Because make no mistake, boy– there are responsibilities that come with being one of Subcon’s branches. Most of it is instinct, the same way others know how to speak, or walk, or breathe. But some things must be learned– we are, after all, still human,” He explained. The ‘ _however differently we might seem._ ’ went unspoken.

Of course Luka’s family knew about the occasional bright-eyed children that were born in Subcon, the same way everyone did. As long as their civilization had been feeding the forest, there were people among them who served as the forest’s eyes. But there was a cliff-chasm’s difference between clumsily feeling things out on his own with only wordless instinct and secondhand accounts, and learning from someone who _understood_.

Besides, Camellia seemed like a pretty fun friend. Even if she was a bit… much. 

“I would appreciate your guidance.” Luka said, dipping his head in the informal approximation of a shallow bow. Paused for a moment, realizing he was forgetting something. “But, I have a question first? What should I call you?”

“... Ah, that’s what I was forgetting,” The old man muttered near-inaudibly into the rim of his mug. “You can call me Ephrim. Or Grandpa, even- one more little hellion calling me that won’t make much a difference.”

The image of a dozen Camellias wreaking havoc in the abode sprang to mind, and Luka surreptitiously looked around, as if expecting another redheaded child to pop out like a stalking bushcat. “There are _more_ like her?”

Ephrim’s rumbling chuckles were almost drowned out by Camellia’s indignant gasp.

\--

**311 BFC**

Luka’s parents never did ask where he ran off to the moment his tutors released him. Which was expected, since the weight of their focus was always on their eldest child and heir, but for once he didn’t feel the slight nettle-sting of it– now, he had someone waiting for him. 

Or, at least, he usually did. Camellia was rather late; the sun had already moved a handspan across the sky since Luka had arrived at the heart-tree. 

From his perch on the massive blackthorn that looped around the tree, Luka had a sweeping view of the clearing. The carefully-maintained lanterns hung on poles around the fenceline. The wide, beaten dirt paths branching out from Subcon Forest’s point of birth. A shallow pool of winter-clear water surrounding the tree– perfectly clean, despite running red just days ago from the populace’s Langnacht Festival blood offerings to feed the creature they lived on. Although the amount of blood from the entire populace giving a drop from thorn-pricked fingers was enough to stain the pool like a sunset, Luka knew it was more of a snack for Subcon than anything.

The _real_ feeding grounds were less than a mile out from the heart-tree, fenced in and only entered for funerals: the burial plots. And the graveyard would never expand, because Subcon ate _everything_ , bones included. Likewise, there was no need for gravestones at the actual burial grounds; it was much better to have the carved plaques at the household’s shrine, near the deceased’s home and family. 

And while the forest was a scavenger by nature, it _did_ hunt sometimes– even the natives hesitated to tread over the swamp at night. Or, at least, most people did. The swamp-fumes, unnervingly resembling wispy hands, never touched Luka. 

Once again feeling exceedingly bored with just waiting, Luka adjusted the tie of his mask and closed his eyes, sinking back into the greater forest consciousness. The solid column of incorporeal nerves behind him, running down from the heart-tree and across the expanse of the forest. A faint ghost-tang of blood from Langnacht, lingering in a stone-cavern throat. The whisper of not-food’s feet over grass, like a breeze tickling the hairs of his arms. 

Luka’s eyes snapped open, his breath quickened, and a grin crawled across his face. 

Filled with the twitchy mischief of a child out to give his friend a scare, Luka darted into the bushes on the side of the road, which helpfully clustered a little closer around him. His parents, at some point, _had_ tried to break this particular habit, but with little success; if it could be stalked and pounced on, Luka would hunt it until he inevitably got bored.

There! Ambling up the road, a smear of wind-tugged red hair, and a bark-brown cloak edged in blue, hood pulled back to bare a worn fox mask. 

Hold in a breath. Stop moving. Play the part of a completely innocuous, uninhabited bush. Wriggle a little bit.

Camellia didn't stand a chance. She stumbled, shrieking in outrage as Luka tugged the cloak over her head and across her eyes. He snickered, dancing out of her reach as she blindly swiped at him. 

After much ungainly flailing, Camellia managed to swipe the tangling fabric from her face. “You!” She jabbed an accusing finger at him. “When will you learn I’m not a bushcat for you to stalk and scare for kicks?”

“Who, me? Never!” Luka said cheekily, rocking back on his heels.

Camellia straightened and stilled. _Considered_ him, in a way that reminded Luka all too much of the stable cats eyeing a mouse. 

Fleeing was still only a budding thought in his mind when his friend darted forward and scooped him up over her shoulders. Though his squirming swayed her path as she ran, he still didn’t escape before the world went tilt, a thunderous splash bubbling around his ears and water closing over his head. 

Luka resurfaced in the heart-tree’s basin, spitting brackish water out of his mouth and squinting through wet bangs as Camellia doubled over, laughing uproariously. “You look like a wet bushcat!” She crowed.

Uncomfortably aware of how his cloak slapped against his calves- his mother had just recently showed him how to lengthen it, and keep the shape, in preparation for his inevitable growth spurt- Luka sullenly squished his way out of the water towards his guffawing friend. “That was excessive retaliation,” he grumped.

“Ooh, busting out the _big words_.” Camellia gasped, punctuating her sarcasm by fanning her face like some fainting Omnoc lady-in-waiting. “Well, now that you got that out of your system, do you want to go check out the well or not? The water levels are low so maybe we can see the stuff that got stuck in there!”

Of course Camellia would think well-spelunking was a perfectly casual and safe way to play. “Yeah! Race you there!” Luka said, and bolted, because he wasn’t actually any better when it came to appropriate safety measures.

When he returned home, purple cloak dyed black with dripping water and a mud stain on the corner of his mask, Luka’s parents said nothing, if they even noticed his return at all. For once he figured this was a good thing, because he really did _not_ want to be scolded about keeping the customary Subcon cloaks and masks clean. As if it made any difference to him- no spirit would dare touch him with the forest resting behind his eyes like a dragon’s lazy weight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly setting establishment here. Little shows of how the forest works, and how humans living in it have integrated it into their lives. It’s a form of mutualism, just on a really weird scale. Also some hints for Subconite culture! Culture clash is going to be a minor factor here, especially with magically gifted people like the forest-folk; to other Subconites, who know what he probably is, Prince is maybe a little bit out of place, like something large inhabiting a far-too-small body. To anyone else? He comes off as fey and strange, and probably more than a little bit creepy. ‘Cause ya know that feeling of being watched when you’re out alone at night in the wilds? Probably by something a _lot_ bigger than you? Yeah.
> 
> [tumblr](https://banyanas.tumblr.com/tagged/get-along-hat)  
> 


	2. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bear in mind that the Snatcher’s elemental core is _fire_ , and think of that that says about Subcon Forest.
> 
> Also, you will see references to the Annexation Campaign and Omnoc here, with Subcon as a province to the larger kingdom. I’d advise giving the prequel in the series a poke
> 
> Subconite locals always seem a bit Odd due to cultural differences- small things, like body language and how they navigate their surroundings and weird nonchalance about feeding their dead to the ground instead of Proper Cremation Rites™. The prince is just Mega Spooky because of the forest thing. Even if they don't know intellectually, people get the vibes that when luka is looking at them, it's not just one being behind his eyes. People can tell when they're being watched like that- those hairs on the back of your neck exist for a reason.

** The Subcon Annexation Campaign **

_Some one hundred years before its fall, Subcon was plunged in one of the few wars in its history that wasn’t against itself._

_King Cadenus Paracos wished to expand the borders of Omnoc to cover all of humanity’s native lands, and when his offer for annexation- which was admittedly less generous than the one given to the last Margravate absorbed into Omnoc four centuries prior- was soundly rejected by every clan in Subcon, Cadenus took the territories by sword._

_Despite its relatively smaller size, the war with Subcon was the costliest in Omnoc’s history- a point that Cadenus famously denied as the war went on, citing that a collection of warlords whose only previous enemies were each other could not possibly deny the might of the North. However, numbers were far less likely to lie to the Omnoc generals than the king, and tactics that were sound in the frigid mountains or tundra were obsolete or even actively detrimental in the thick forests and swamps of Subcon._

_Despite this, all of Subcon’s clans were conquered, and as a show of their position as Omnecian vassals, the Pryce family was given the title of Margrave, to be passed down through the bloodline, and who held sway over all other clans in Subcon. This act forestalled the inevitable rebellion plans for nearly a hundred years, as the resentment of other Clan Heads towards the now-comfortably powerful Pryces kept all ideas for succession divided among the individual clans._

_It is agreed that the tension surrounding succession came to a head at the fall of Subcon, though the instigators and details of their wish for independence remain unknown, as almost all records from Subcon are still trapped in the territory itself._

_-Brigid Larsen_

\--

**310 BFC**

Early in the morning, before the sun rose, eleven-year-old Luka woke with a choking smoke-tang clinging to his throat, a burning itch on his skin, and a thundering realization.

_The forest is on fire!_

He hit the floor out of the bed at a dead run, uncaring that he left his mask and cloak and shoes behind. The estate was still slumbering, and only the family portraits witnessed him pelting out of the house, feet bare and eyes wild.

A door slammed open ahead of him like a rising cliffside, nearly smacking him in the face, and Luka skidded into the wall in his hasty scramble to avoid it. Sleep-glazed golden eyes peered out from the room, so much like his, but without the summer-bright glow behind Luka’s.

“Kid?” Apolonia muttered, confused, looking even more tired than she usually did. And she was _always_ tired, even more than a sixteen year old usually was.

Luka careened away from the door, ignoring his sister’s question. He’d explain later, and it’s not like he hadn’t covered for _her_ late-night outings. She’d understand.

Luka flew across the green and scrabbled at the stable door, ignoring the splinters pricking his fingers and leaving tiny smears of blood across the latch. It didn’t _matter_ , it was just little wood slivers, nothing compared to the fire nipping at his heels, at his hair, at his bark and branches and leaves-

The stable door banged open, startling awake the dozing horses housed within- including Echo, his personal mount. Luka didn't bother with the saddle, just threw on the bridle and launched himself onto the bay’s back, galloping in the direction of the fire. 

He smelled the wildfire before he saw its glow- an acrid scent, like burning flesh and forge-smoke, something not quite the same as a fireplace’s smell. Luka pulled his horse to a stop, dismounting even as the beast’s hooves skidded in the grass surrounding Subcon Swamp. He rushed towards the shoreline and grabbed at the water, swirling swamp-muck echoing the movement of swirling hands and a swirling mind-

Something grabbed the scruff of his pajamas, hauling him back like he was a misbehaving kitten and breaking his concentration. 

Luka flailed, before the hand dropped him like a hot coal. When he looked up to snarl at the interloper, he froze, eyes on the wizened finger pointed at his face.

Attached to the finger was Ephrim, wrinkled face deeply shadowed by flickering firelight. “I do hope you weren’t planning on dumping the swamp on top of that, boy,” he reprimanded. 

Luka pushed himself up to his feet, adrenaline still shaking in his limbs. “Why did you stop me? Do you want us- it- to just… burn?!”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ephrim said bluntly. Before Luka could open his mouth, the old man continued. “What, you think because it is painful, then it is unnecessary? If it was, then there would be no life!” He gripped Luka’s head and forced him to look out at the writhing fire that inched across the wetland. “Look with your other senses! The cypress bark smokes, but do you feel its innards burning in your bones? The pain is only temporary, lad.”

Ephrim released his grip, and Luka continued to stare into the flames, resisting the urge to itch at the phantom burning sensation on his skin. 

“What do you feel?” Ephrim asked, far gentler this time.

Hesitantly, Luka flexed his consciousness to touch the forest deeper, careful not to get too lost in it and forget his human body. The massive cypress trees, slightly seared bark a burning edge held against his nerves, but the bodies of the trees themselves were still strong and untouched. The swamp-water, turning aside flames that crawled across the surface. The tiniest sparks of new growth underground, barely flickering like fireflies in sunlight. A strange sense of loss at the tips of tree branches, something new drifting from their fingers.

After Luka’s stumbling explanation of what he felt, Ephrim nodded in approval. “Yes, byblis plants and prickle-pines need the fire more than anything else. Byblis seeds need the flames and smoke to begin growing in the soil, and as for the pine-” Ephrim looked up at one of the burning trees looming above them, and tilted exhaled slowly. This close, Luka could feel the old man coaxing the smoldering tree to bend down over them. Like moving his own limb, Luka tracked it– brain to nerves to muscle to movement, but translated through the forest’s enormous form and incorporeal mind. Using his cloak to smother it, leaving barely-visible soot-stains on the purple and blue-stitched fabric, Ephrim snapped a pinecone off the bent branch. “-They require fire to open, and spread their seed.”

Carefully, Luka took the smoldering pinecone when it was offered to him, marvelling at the flared seed-scales. And realized the mistake he almost made, to ease his own physical discomfort. “... Sorry for almost drenching the wildfire,” he muttered. 

Ephrim scoffed and waved him off. “No need, boy. I myself only realized why the fire had to be left alone _after_ I smothered it. Took me a while to remember Subcon’s core is _fire_ , not earth.”

Thinking back to the searing core he felt in his deepest dreams, a fire-pulse of life that his heartbeat echoed, Luka nodded. It was kind of silly of him to panic, looking back; the forest had fire lacing beneath its crust like blood, and he shared that core- a glint of sunlight on steel compared to a bonfire, but still undeniably _fire_. Heavens knew he’d driven estate servants to distraction as a toddler, always grasping at stove-fires and sneezing sparks because his tiny body wasn’t enough to insulate his own little fire-core mirrored from the forest. 

Lost in thought, Luka scratched at his arm absentmindedly, and winced at the phantom sting- a burn that wasn’t actually there, just an echo of the forest’s own faint singes. “... How long is the sunburn feeling going to stick around?”

“Hope you can resist the urge to itch, because it’ll be a few weeks.”

Luka scowled, and out of habit ( _“Foul expressions are an admittance of weakness, my son.”_ ) he grabbed at his mask to flip it down and hide his sour expression- and then froze, when he realized his head felt light for more reasons than just smoke. 

Though no threshold-jumpers or horizon-spirits would dare touch him, even without the mask to hide his face or the thread-maze lining his cloak to mislead malevolent spirits, Luka’s mother always impressed to never, _ever_ leave his mask behind until he was thirteen, and never leave his cloak behind at _all_.

His mother was most certainly awake now, after the racket he made- and even Apolonia couldn’t cover for that. 

“My mom’s gonna kill me,” Luka said faintly.

(She didn’t. But she _did_ throw him around the sparring mat until he saw sparks.)

\--

**310 BFC**

Spine straight as stiffened steel, Margravine Brina Pryce subtly nudged her son away from his fidgeting, and then did the same for her husband’s wandering and obviously bored gaze. Her eldest daughter and heir was not here today- there was no point in Apolonia’s presence for these particular negotiations. And Brina did not yet trust her teenage daughter to avoid grievously offending the queen.

The least they could do was look attentive for the royal visit- the first in Subcon since the Annexation Treaty. 

_Though the request to attend the harvest festivities is a comforting cover story for the public_ , Brina thought, bowing as a Clan Head to a higher-ranked ruler as the Queen entered the foyer, daughter in tow. _I know precisely why you’re really here, since you were so kind as to send a letter_.

Smoothly, she rose from her bow. “Your majesties, it is a pleasure to host you. Would you like to join us in the solar? I’ve had a particularly fine rice wine brought up from the cellar, if you would like some.”

“The pleasure would be all mine, Margravine.” the queen responded, gliding over the wood floors as if they were ice.

At the solar doorway, Brina looked at the two children trailing behind them. “Luka, dear, would you mind showing her highness around town?”

When the little blonde princess looked to her mother for assurance, the queen urged her on. “Go see the sights, dear. Take a guard with you.”

At the queen’s approval, Luka somewhat awkwardly offered his arm to the princess, just as Brina had told him to before the royal arrival, and led the girl out of the manor, royal guard a respectful distance behind.

With the children away, Brina, Cassius (who already had a book in his hand, and if Queen Maira wasn’t known for overlooking social ignorance like that, Brina would’ve yanked the book out of her husband’s fingers), and the queen settled into the solar, wine poured and savored before the real reason for Queen Maira’s visit was broached. 

A sip of her wine- the action was not enough to fortify her, but it did give her some time to collect her words- and Brina addressed the queen. “Your Majesty. Your visit to Subcon is, of course, an honor, but I believe you wanted to discuss more serious matters than a province’s simple holiday?”

“Let’s not bother with pleasantries, please. There are no tittering courtiers preoccupied with concealing their intent,” Queen Maira said. “The match I proposed between our children is one of mutual benefit.” Eyes level, her attention flicked from the Margrave, to Brina, then to the view out the window overlooking the beaten-dirt training ring. “I’m aware of the… lingering bitterness, after my great-grandfather’s ill-advised and bloody approach to his campaign.” A level gaze, finger absentmindedly tapping on her untouched wine. “An heir with Subconite blood on the throne would promote further unity between us, and perhaps the other Omnoc provinces in turn.”

Brina considered. The queen wielded agreeability like a weapon, a fine cloud-glass mask that promised benign desires, and _only_ benign desires. This marriage proposal was to be expected, from what Brina knew of Her Majesty- a compromise without actually _compromising_ , power exchanged but never lost to her. She never acknowledged the possibility of separation, even when condemning Cadenus’s infamously violent war.

But the opportunity to have her son in real power, with tangible influence over a kingdom as large as Omnoc... Yes, perhaps she may not live to see it, but Brina was confident the queen was unknowingly plotting the map-borders that would finally separate the forest from Omnoc. With Luka’s child as Omnoc’s monarch, and Apolonia as Subcon’s Margravine, secession from the kingdom was well within reach.

“It would be an honor for our son to sire the future monarch,” Brina said, projecting warmth. And then stopped, remembering her son’s condition. “There will need to be, ah, stipulations.”

A brow above the queen’s wine-red eye arched questioningly. “Oh? I had expected a match to already be far enough in Subcon’s favor- what else would you ask for?”

Brina knew precisely what else she could ask for. But she knew she wouldn’t get it. But this was not that yearning for secession, wrapped around her heart like a burning chain. This was a more… mundane desire. “How often would our son be able to return? It will likely need to be frequent, with how far away Omnoc Keep is.”

“Why, of course he would- I’m sure he would like to see home sometimes, perhaps bring his children to meet their grandparents and aunt.”

“Oh, no, Your Majesty. We are not requesting Luka’s presence for _family visits_.” Brina said, weighing the queen on a razor blade’s edge. “Subcon has so few eyes to see through, and so few humans to commune with; he will need to visit the forest whenever he so desires. _That_ is my stipulation.” 

Queen Maira was frustratingly unruffled by her biting tone. “Ah, if there are… religious observances he needs to attend, then surely we can work out something.”

There is absolutely no way the queen was so ignorant, not with her royal station and already-admitted knowledge of the blood on her predecessor’s hands. “You seriously don’t know?”

Now, even her husband was looking up from his doubtlessly-dry reading material, picking up the faint notes of tension rising in the room. 

“I was being entirely literal. Subcon Forest is _alive_ , Queen Maira,” Brina bit out, low and deliberate. “And it heeds no man’s demands. But it may do as bid, if asked by parts of itself.”

Horrible realization dawned in Queen Maira’s eyes, enough to stain the pleasant mask she wore. “Much of the casualties were attributed to soldiers missing in action,” The queen said, haltingly. “And many fatalities were recounted as knights being found in… grisly states. Choking on firethorn, trapped by tree roots, drowned in the rivers. No arrows or sword-wounds to be found on them.” A contemplative sip of her wine, to strategically cover her faint lapse in mein. “I was… quite thorough in my research from that era, you see.”

Brina’s lips split into a grin- bared teeth, rather than a smile. “They bid Subcon to ravage trespassers, and so it did. Kingdomers called them woods-witches, among other things- we do not call them anything. ‘Tis bad luck to assign a name to such powers, you see.”

The queen’s serene countenance cracked, and frost spiraled over her wine glass. “Ah, yes, I know what you speak of, now.”

“So you understand, then, why we would be loath to let any more of them leave Subcon permanently again,” The Margravine said bitterly. “Not after Cadenus ordered every one of them _slain_.”

Utter silence. Until, “There is a manor the royal family owns, a mere half-day’s ride from Subcon’s borders. Perhaps for their courting period, my daughter and your son could stay there, if that is an agreeable compromise.”

Brina thought it over; the influence even just her son would hold as Prince Consort over the realm was not to be ignored, and her grandchildren would hold unparalleled power, perhaps even inherit the Omnoc royal family’s powerful ice magic. Her smile softened, somewhat- iron, rather than sword-steel. ”Well then, I would _love_ to bind our families together in blood. Now, you mentioned something about finalizing the contract here in your letters?”

Smoothly, as if cued by the word ‘contract’, Cassius slipped out a sheaf of papers from his breast pocket. She may not truly love the man, not like a wife ought to, but Brina still acknowledged him as a worthy partner with a different strength than her. The man could commit highway robbery on paper, and defend it in court. 

They were going to squeeze every frozen drop of political power from the queen that they could.

\--

Vanessa couldn’t help fidgeting next to the Margrave’s son on a bench at the Subcon Plaza, feeling mismatched and out-of-place- her formal green dress and bare face a stark and strange contrast to the throng of people in hooded mantles lined with embroidered geometric patterns, and children donning masks both mundane and otherworldly. Despite every citizen wearing the same overall style of cloak, the crowd still looked like a writhing rainbow from a distance, with so many combinations of dyed fabric and colored thread-thorns.

At least Luka seemed to feel just as awkward as she did. Although it was equal chance that his nervousness was because of Vanessa, or because of the royal guard still shadowing them. The conversation was nice, if a bit stilted, starting and stopping like a carriage over stony roads. 

“-And that’s why stalemate cases can still be determined by unarmed honor duels, if the judge allows it!” Luka finished, ungainly waving his hands around as if to add some spice to what would likely be an incredibly bland courtroom story. He flushed, seeming embarrassed by the deluge of words he’d thrown on her when asked about his favorite things to read. “Oh, uh, I know it’s not that interesting. What do you like to read, though?”

Maybe it wasn’t that interesting, but someone who brimmed with so much sun-touched joy about a subject… well, it was refreshingly honest, compared to her mother and the court. Even if it was a little bit dry. “Oh, I like old romance novels! The ones with secret dramas, and happy endings!” She’d happened upon one with a tragic end, of a man whose lover had gone on her hero’s journey to slay dragons and topple an evil wizard, but she fell for another knight on her travels. That love triangle had ended… poorly, and Vanessa had cried, just a little bit, when the story concluded with a three-way suicide. 

Probably not great reading for a ten-year-old princess, in retrospect.

“Huh,” Luka said, pondering. “I don’t think I could keep up with all that drama and secret-keeping in a book.”

“Oh, but you can keep up with a month-long court case your father was handling?” Vanessa countered, and then grimaced, because oh, that was _rude_ -

Even shaded under his propped-up mask, Luka’s odd eyes seemed to glow as he grinned. “Oh _man_ , it was interesting, but it was hard to keep up with! Dad didn’t seem to have any trouble with it, but he did actually go to law school, and he _is_ a grownup…” He mused.

Speaking of grownups and their business… “I wonder what our parents are talking about?” Vanessa pondered.

Luka shrugged, rustling the yellow-stitched purple cloak he hadn’t removed even in the harvest-season heat. “Eh, I dunno. Finances? That’s what most grownup lords and ladies talk about, I think.” A considering look, before he punched his fisted hand out in a way that looked like he was stabbing at something. “Or whacking each other around the sparring turf. Although I don’t think Omnoc nobles do that?”

“Not for fun, no,” Vanessa confirmed. “Although I’ve heard challenges happen during really late parties, sometimes. Mother ended up freezing two earls to the floor, once.” And hadn’t _that_ been a rare sight; Queen Maira favored the carrot over the stick, but still kept the stick in question whittled sharp enough to scare away anyone who was seriously intent on turning down negotiations made with pleasant smiles and perfect words. 

“Oh! If the queen can do magic, can you do it too?” Luka leaned forward, curious. 

Vanessa looked to the glacier-silent guard. To the crowd, who paid no mind to the pair to strange children on the bench. Then, shyly, she called a faint sparkle of snowflakes to her hands, weaving the dancing ice between her fingers like a cat’s cradle.

Wonder passed over Luka’s face. “Oooh, so you can just do that anywhere? Even in midsummer, when it’s hot?”

Vanessa shrugged, releasing her hold on the snowflakes and watching them fade into steam. “I don’t think it gets as hot back home as it does here, but yeah, I can make it anywhere.”

He leaned back, cheeks puffed in concentration. “Hmm, I can do a little bit anywhere, but there’s a lot of things I can only do in the forest.”

Wait. “You have magic too? Can I see?”

Luka said nothing, but snapped his fingers a few times- and like they were made of flint, little blue candle-flames sparked at the tip of his finger. “Yeah, but I can’t do much more than a handful of fire and generating some heat. It’s kinda hard to push it up from inside and past my skin, yeah?”

Vanessa nodded, even though she didn’t get it. Her problem had been keeping her ice from flying around, and using it constructively, rather than calling it forth at all. “But you can do other things besides fire magic? The court enchantress always said that people with inborn magic were limited to just one element, and it’s why alchemy is more common and more practical.” A look askance. “I’d love to prove her wrong.”

“She sounds kinda dumb,” Luka said, with all the confidence of an eleven-year-old who’d never met the woman himself. “I can only move stuff in Subcon’s boundaries, obviously, but- look.” He leaned down, crooking his finger like he was calling a street-dog to him for treats.

Every crawling vine, every strand of grass poking up from the loose cobblestone, every leaf on the ring of trees appeared to strain towards the boy- even the wind seemed to spiral about them like a blackfish playing in the currents, the breeze combing through the children’s hair like smoke-fingers. The magic in the air felt warm, as if the heat beneath the earth rose ever-so-slightly upwards. 

Vanessa thought, privately, that there was something poetic about the two of them, opposing elements and foreign origins and all.

(Later, in the sprawling, fern-carved halls of Omnoc Keep, Vanessa would sidle up to the closed door to her mother’s study, eavesdropping on the royal guard who escorted her and Luka at the festival talking to her mother about the noble lad the Queen had matched to Vanessa, on the queen’s request for the lordling’s disposition.

‘ _He was… unnerving_ ,’ the guard- one of the most trusted in her retinue- had admitted. Like a ghost-wind off the swamp that even the Subconite locals avoided. The queen argued that it didn’t matter how strange their children were; Subcon had only been annexed to the kingdom for just over a century, and allowing one of their own to help rule Omnoc in its entirety would perhaps soothe the bristling nerves that remained, even with the annexation campaign only a hundred years past. 

To Vanessa’s twelve-year-old mind, one hundred years seemed like an _eternity_. She only knew of the annexation campaign from her history tutors– the fighting hadn’t even been long or large enough to be called a war. ‘Only’ a century, indeed! Holding a grudge for so long was unfathomable to her.

She would think no more of this overheard conversation, or ancient grudges, even as her fiance clawed at the metal-plated arms that would drag him to a coffin made of cold-brittle stone, nearly a decade after their first meeting.)

\--

Swinging her legs from her perch on a wooden fence, Camellia resisted the urge to poke Luka. He’d been _sulking_ , ever since the queen and her entourage left, and it was driving Camellia nuts.

She gave in to the urge. “C’mon, man, you’ve been mopey ever since the royal family left.” Deviously, she grinned, hoping to prod a sore enough spot that he’d spill. “Aw, does little Lukey have a _crush_ on the princess?” She waggled her eyebrows.

Luka jerked so hard he nearly fell off the fence, and the old wood splintered as he dug his fingers into it. “I don’t! It’s… kind of the opposite, in a way?” He flushed, embarrassed by the implications. “Not that she’s not nice! Just, uh.” A sigh, all the troubles of a lordling gusting out at once. “Mother and Father picked a marriage contract for me. But I’m not sure if I should be upset because I didn’t get a say, or relieved because it means I don’t need to decide myself, since I don’t think I can feel for anyone that way. Like a husband and wife should.”

Camellia rolled that thought over in her head like a felled log in a lake. Arranged marriages were common among Clan Heads, the potential spouse selected for strength and prowess, but usually they weren’t matched so young- Luka was only eleven. And it was odd, as well, since the Pryce heiress didn’t have her own intended- by all rights, Apolonia should have been engaged before Luka. 

“Well, who is it then? From one of the swamp-clans? Or an earth-clan?”

Luka gazed down, fiddling with the seam of his mantle’s edge, tracing the pattern of a barely-there bleach stain. “It’s Vanessa,” he muttered.

Camellia’s jaw dropped. “The princess?” she croaked, disbelieving. No wonder Luka was such a knot of nerves! The prospect of ruling Omnoc had to be daunting by itself- the kingdom was huge, magnitudes bigger than Subcon, bigger than Camellia could _imagine_. 

And Omnecian people were _weird_. They preferred alchemy, rather than honest inborn magic, despite their royal family’s ice-mages displaying their power as proof of their right to rule. And they let their children walk around bare-faced and bare-shouldered, no cloak or mask. Some even said they _cremated_ their dead, rather than giving their flesh back to the earth.

Amongst the prospect of treading water in an ocean of strange people with strange habits and strange culture, Camellia had another concern for Luka, this one more pressing. “Will you have to leave Subcon?”

Luka’s face fell, the reminder of the impending distance from the forest no doubt looming in his mind like glaciers. “Not for a long time, at least.” Slowly, a grin crawled across his face, vine-thin and sardonic. “Besides, I’ll be one of Omnoc’s co-rulers. So it’s not like anyone can keep me from coming and going as I please. Vanessa seemed to like the festival too, maybe I can bring her with me!”

“Good! Because otherwise I’d be arrested for breaking into the castle and kidnapping the poor Prince Consort.” Camellia declared, hooking her fingers into claws like a menacing dragon, hunting for maidens to pluck from towers. 

Luka shoved her, hard enough for Camellia to topple to the ground in a laughing heap. “Ugh, don’t, that’s embarrassing! I don’t need you to bail me out of _anywhere_ , Cam!”

Spitting grass out of her mouth, Camellia privately vowed to do just that, despite his protests. He’d bailed her out of the consequences of her troublemaking ways enough- she’d just have to wait till the right time to return the favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Subcon forest seems pretty ecologically diverse; even after expanding the size, acre-wise, it’s still a lot of variety packed into one area. But a lot of it is wetlands. And wetlands _burn_. Fire ecologies are cool, yeah? Byblis and Cypress are common wetland flora with adaptations regarding fire, and prickle-pine is another name for Table Mountain Pine, which while it isn’t native to wetlands (but i can have it border a swamp because fantasy), it _does_ require extremely high heat to disperse seed. Neato! 
> 
> Margrave Cassius Pryce during the entire conversation: [rapid-fire elevator music playing]. He’s just a very reclusive guy, prefers silence and his books. The Pryce clan members pretty much unanimously decided he needed a wife who was… far more driven than he was. He’s perfectly content to keep finances and lawbooks sorted out (and he does a damn good job at that. People? Especially raising a child? Not so much). His wife, by contrast, takes a far more active role. Not exactly motherly, but the Clan Heads and their families were traditionally also warlords, way back when, and Brina was big on imparting that onto her kids, whether they liked it or not. Apolonia took to combat extremely well, but lacked the ambition and care for the greater good of the clan that Brina would have preferred. Luka isn’t exactly defenseless, but he isn’t a terror on the battlefield like Apolonia ended up as, and his lawyerly ambitions never bore fruit before the icepocalypse.
> 
> [tumblr](https://banyanas.tumblr.com/tagged/get-along-hat)   
> 


	3. Hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The basement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You’ll notice Luka has been getting some… contradictory advice, from the people he loves. Thing is? Two sets of seemingly contradictory advice can both be true, and can be coexisting concepts. Part of growing up is realizing that, though a lot of times it’s hard.
> 
> Once a Subconite child leaves their childhood mask behind, they pick up another method or protection, but this time against more corporeal threats: weaponry. Pretty much everyone above the age of 14 in Subcon is armed. And yes, that does mean that some of the minions (I have them as ranging from ages 8-17) are packing pointy metal things in their plush bodies. 
> 
> And now this is the part where I’m on my knees begging you to heed the content warnings. And really, it’s rated Teen, but if you’re like 13 or 14 I’d prefer if you took a step back, given the particular tags on this fic that apply to ch 3.
> 
> A warning for some gore and general unpleasantness later in this chapter. Luka gets his basement field trip, so expect the usual nastiness of that. In particular, there is some non-consensual touching when Vanessa pays a visit. Starts at the section of ‘4 days after the killing cold’ and ends at ‘7 days after’. This is the main reason this fic was bumped up to T rating. Considering the delicate nature of this kind of shit, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. Seriously though. Mind the warning tags up there at the top. 
> 
> (Obviously, he keeps this information very, _very_ far away from Hat Kid. She never even gets a hint of the extent of Vanessa’s… yeah. Score one for repression!)

** Fall of the Paracos Dynasty **

_The Paracos family ruled Omnoc for nine hundred years; at its height, their kingdom spanned the northeastern world, covering almost all the human homelands. They held onto their crowns for as long as the Omnecian throne existed, beginning when the first king Eilwyn united the northern territories either through alliances or by the sword._

_The Paracos family device displayed mountains and white-dusted green, and moose featured prominently in crown-owned castles and fortresses- their associated animal likely came about due to legends of King Eilwyn riding one into battle._

_The last of the Paracos family line perished with Subcon, most likely slain by any Subconites that survived the initial ice-blast, as vengeance for their forest’s destruction and their leaders’ deaths. As the area is completely inaccessible, there is practically no accurate recollection of what truly happened in Queen Vanessa Paracos’s last moments._

_There are old legends of the last Paracos cursing the land where she died- as long as the blood of those who conspired against her live on, so too will the blizzard raging above the southernmost tip of Omnoc. The more scholarly-minded believe that the huge amount of magic released first from the Subconite deaths, and then from the queen’s death, created a wild-magic feedback loop, endlessly feeding the storm above and plunging the area into near-unsurvivable temperatures for centuries._

_-Brigid Larsen_

\--

**306 BFC**

Luka was the last person in the household to see Apolonia Pryce, before she disappeared from their lives forever. 

The trees always creaked a certain way when she climbed down them from her window. So, as usual, Luka found himself in her room and looking blearily into her honey-gold eyes as she perched on the tree, like some kind of deranged owl carrying her own weight in knives. Without fail, he’d feel her weight on the old oak like a mosquito on his own skin. 

“So, what excuse should I feed the parents this time?” Luka asked, mustering all the considerable sarcasm a fifteen year old boy possibly could. “Out hunting again? Or maybe we should mix it up, and you went to give the heart-tree a sacrifice for good luck in your next fight.”

He’d been covering for her escapades for years now, and was familiar with the song and dance. Apolonia’s dating life didn’t concern him, but it _did_ concern their parents, so both of them were experts at lying through their teeth about late night goings-ons. Luka didn’t exactly see what about some random Omnecian squire was special enough for his sister to fall in love, but Cato Larsen seemed a nice enough person. And they left her glowing with sun-warm happiness. 

Luka found romance tiring, but when she _couldn’t_ see Cato, Apolonia inevitably sunk into either a swamp-cold loneliness or a manic weapons-bristling nightmare that practically lived on the sparring field and waited to beat up poor unsuspecting challengers.

Carefully, as if stepping over a delicate, iced lake, Apolonia crept back inside from the old oak’s branches. At twenty, she was still taller than him, if only just barely. “... Hey, kid. Luka. You know I love you, yeah?”

Confused, Luka scrunched his brow and tilted his head. “Um, yeah, of course I do.” Warily, he peered out past the tree, into the stars, as if they’d whisper the reasons behind her strange behavior to him. “Why are you being like this, all the sudden?”

Tucking a flyaway brown lock of hair behind her ear, Apolonia shuffled backwards. “Oh, I’m still going to see Cato, just… I’ll be gone for a little while longer.” She shrugged, sheepish. “I’ll be back eventually, don’t worry.”

Luka put together what his sister and her lover would get up to in that period of time. “Oh, gross, I _don’t_ want to hear about it,” He shuddered.

Sun-glint-quick, Apolonia flicked him sharply on the forehead. “Oi, mind out of the gutter, nerd. Or maybe I’ll change my mind about missing you while I’m gone.” 

Luka was pulled into a hug he couldn’t escape even if he wanted to, face smushed into the crook of her shoulder, the hilt of her sword gently bonking into his forehead, coarse embroidery and worn fabric pressing into his eyes. A black mantle, for freedom and secrecy. Yellow stitching, for death and ferocity. Fitting, for someone who chafed under Mother’s expectations about politics and responsibilities, but who exceeded Luka in every martial art imaginable. 

It was strange, coming from someone who preferred friendly headlocks and nudges, but not unwelcome. Luka allowed himself to enjoy a selfish moment of warmth before pushing away. “You _better_ be planning on coming back soon. Ven’s coming to the border manor soon, and if both of us are out of the house at the same time, Father might stress himself into a coma.”

“Oh, I think he’ll be fine,” Apolonia snorted. “Just do me a favor, yeah? Watch out for yourself, kid. Don’t be afraid to put your own needs over Subcon.”

Quizzically, Luka tilted his head. What an odd thing to say. “But I _am_ Subcon.” In multiple ways. He was just one branch in an entire tree’s ecosystem, and he was supposed to raise a leader for the _entire kingdom_ , including Subcon. 

And now she just looked sad. “Nah, Luka, you’re not the forest. It’s part of _you_ , sure, but you aren’t a part of _it_. You’re just yourself, and nothing can change that. So be selfish, sometimes.” She grinned, cheeky and a little bit forced. “I’m a little selfish sometimes, too. What do you think this whole thing is, if not selfish?” She waved a hand out towards the oak tree, still waiting patiently for her to scurry down it to see Cato.

Luka turned that thought over carefully. “I… suppose that can make sense. But it’s way too late for these kinds of conversations, ‘Nia.” He frowned, pondering. “Or is it early…”

She snorted. “Go to bed, kiddo. I’ll see you when I get back.”

Sleepily, he waved at her, and stumbled his way back into bed. 

He thought nothing more of Apolonia’s careful non-answers of precisely when she would return home, not until Mother found a letter under her daughter’s extinguished lamp that detailed her elopement with Cato Larsen, and the promise to return home someday.

\--

**301 BFC**

Camellia once more impulsively tidied a corner of the kitchen- more out of habit then any real concern that Luka would care about the state of the house, nobleman or not. It just paid to avoid dirt drifting around where you cooked your food. 

Usually she didn’t cook at all- and she still wouldn't. But today was a special occasion- Luka was finally heading out to go to law school, and she’d made him promise to drop by her house on the way to the university. Luka spent all his time up in the manor with the princess these days, so Camellia looked forward to seeing him again, and under better terms. She’d seen him last year, for her grandfather’s funeral, and he’d been far too spacey and vacant, even compared to any other depressed nineteen-year-old. 

A knock on the door startled Camellia out of her musings, and she grinned. Sweeping off her dress once more, she bounded up to the door and yanked it open, pulling the future prince into a hug with a surprised squawk and a barely-there flinch. “Luka! I was starting to wonder if you got caught in the green-vines again!”

Luka buried his face in his hands. “Ugh, Cam, I was _eight_ , come on.” He grinned through his fingers, still. “It’s good to see you too, though.”

Camellia wasted no time dragging him over to the worn, mismatched chairs by the tiny side-table- the one next to the open window, where little vines were already starting to creep into the house, and where Camellia could hear the groan of trees leaning towards them. “The forest missed you,” She remarked, pouring them both their tea. 

Luka seemed strangely hesitant, taking the mug, to the point where he subtly sniffed it before drinking. Something about him was subtly _off_ enough for Camellia to look closer, like squinting past rippling water to see the riverbed. Dressed in Omnoc fashion, of course- hopefully he’d at least packed his mantle. And he’d somehow managed to get even _more_ unfairly tall since the last time she saw him, and he carried himself as an unarmed man. 

How strange, for anyone older than fourteen to travel without their blade. Camellia’s own paired swords rested at her bedside, keen as the day they were forged. But beyond even all those oddities… “What happened to your hair?”

“Oh, this?” Luka twitched, fingers brushing the bleach-blonde tips, noticeably subdued. “Ven and I were just… experimenting. It didn’t work out, as you can see.” The tiny smile that stretched across his face was perfectly polite, toothless, and utterly _fake_. “But that doesn’t matter! Tell me how things have been- has my little cousin survived Mother training them as her heir?”

Camellia normally would have pursued further, but worrying about his cousin was a fair concern for Luka. After Apolonia had eloped, and since Luka would be affiliated with Omnoc once he and Princess Vanessa married, Subcon was left with no heirs. Clan Pryce was able to bring in a cousin to serve as a replacement heir, but it was a hasty arrangement. 

She might as well humor him. “I saw them a few days ago actually- I know you never met them for real, but I swear they look just like the Margrave would’ve when he was younger, it’s downright uncanny-”

(As she gesticulated wildly, painting the scene of a standoff between herself and a particularly obstinate customer, Camellia noted her best friend stilled unnaturally as her fingertips whipped past his hair. Not a flinch, really, but enough of an absence of natural movement where it might as well _be_ a flinch.

Her repeated questions of “Are you okay?” were met with dismissal and misdirection, but glints of honesty shone through in his explanations, like moonlit ice.

“Oh, Ven and I just had… a disagreement about going to law school, is all.”

Camellia was left on the stoop as he made his retreat.)

\--

**300 BFC. Day 0 After the Killing Cold.**

Two weeks ago, bells rang in the courtyard for Queen Maira’s death. 

Yesterday, Luka had entered Camellia’s shop stall, haggard from his grief and his journey from the university, and yet lighter than she had ever seen him since he lived at the manor. He wanted to bring his beloved some of her favorite flowers- anything to help comfort the new queen after her mother’s cremation and her own slapdash coronation. 

Today, Camellia awoke from her midday nap to the sound of thunderous cracking, like a thousand forge-hot swords plunging into water. And then, utter silence. 

Shivering with foreboding and cold both, Camellia rolled out of bed and wrapped her brown-blue mantle around her, snatching up her blades and slinging them over her shoulder. She tucked her feet into her sandals as she opened the door-

Frowned, when it didn’t budge. She yanked harder, to no avail. Properly spooked now, Camellia braced both her feet against the doorframe and _heaved-_

Wheezed as the breath was knocked out of her when she hit the floor, detached door handle still grasped in cold fingers. 

Scrabbling to her feet, Camellia flew to the back side of the house, wrenching the curtains open.

… Ice. Sheeting over the window, and likely the entire house, like amber over an insect. 

Following her first frantic, trapped instinct, Camellia hammered at the ice with her fists, then the hilt of a sword, then with a chair that broke to pieces under the force of her swing. Panting, she whipped her head around the tiny house, searching for anything heavy enough to use as a bludgeon to shatter the unnaturally thick ice… and her eyes caught on the stove. 

She gave the stove a _considering_ look. Crouched to light the it, and set every teakettle she owned atop it. 

Seemingly hours later, after pouring three rounds of hot water over the frozen window, Camellia shattered the weakened ice and made her escape. 

She tumbled out of the shattered hole in the ice-window, and raised her head to face an alien landscape. 

Ice sheathed the entire town- houses and trees and grass and _people_ , frozen solid with frost mercifully obscuring their death-masks. There were survivors, hollow-hearted and milling around, gathering loved ones close. Those that remained, at least. 

Camellia passed a woman beating a short pillar with a hammer, each strike sending glittering frost into the frigid breeze. Faintly, she saw a humanoid silhouette inside the pillar, and tried not to vomit. Most of the people outside at this hour would have been _children_. 

Aimlessly, she wandered, stumbling closer and closer to the northernmost side of town. Passed by more of the same, more dead Subconites and more silent, haunted homes. And at the town’s north gate, Camellia looked up, where the sky was churning and blizzard-dark. Where the manor was, where _Luka_ was. 

Camellia’s knees hit the ice.

(In the days after the heart-tree was found dead and the survivors began the journey to Fairview below the Alpine Skyline, Camellia tucked her feet into scavenged boots and tugged her cloak closer around her shoulders- a lone and forsaken warrior fighting the blizzard on the path to the queen’s manor. 

The doors forbade her entry, frozen over and locked. She stalked around the night-silent manor, creeping through the cellar door and jumping when the splash of her feet in the thin sheet of water was echoed by a weak groan, like a dying fire.

First, the smell struck her senses, horror and fetid neglect that tasted of filth. Then, the sight of shadow and flesh hanging from the wall like a macabre tapestry.

Even as she cried out in shock and cupped her friend’s cheek, there was not a single moment of hesitation in her mind. This was _Luka_ , chains faintly clinking as he unconsciously shivered at her touch; but she didn't _care_ that he looked like a night-spirit, with rat-gnawed wounds along his legs gaping into darkness but not bleeding, with smoke-dark feathers matted and clinging to his visible ribs.

Her sword sang free and she dug the point into a chain link, wrenching it with all her might until the water at her feet crackled and froze and pinned her in place.

The thing that descended into the cellar could not be the queen. Could not be a human, not even possibly- it had to be a demon, or a horizon-spirit that stole Vanessa’s corpse. The lava-red eyes glowed past the darkened diamond-dust like stars from behind a stormcloud. 

“ _You_ ,” Vanessa hissed, voice rattling like grinding glaciers.

Terror rose like a sun, engulfing her chest and drowning her mind as she lashed out at the queen, nails drawing four-score marks across Vanessa’s cheek. 

The queen’s blood and Camellia’s blood steamed on the ice spike caving in her skull, and left rust-stains on Luka’s wispy black feathers. 

Her body was thrown into the canyon, never to be given an honorable burial.)

\--

**300 BFC. Day 4 After the Killing Cold.**

Vision graying, threads of agony burning in his arms and flaring with each arduous breath, Luka wished to die. He _should_ be dead, by all rights- enough days without water had passed that his tears were long dried up, and his heart stuttered and started like a wet candle. His breath no longer fogged in the freezing cold, and he was certain his blackening hands and thinning fingertips were already dead to frostbite.

Subcon Forest was dying, each of its life-pulses flaring slower and slower. So why couldn’t he receive the same mercy?

The darkness crowding his vision seemed to move, sometimes. Unnaturally so. Curling from the vents, like spindly branch-fingers. Rising from beneath his feet, sinking into his pores and flaring outward from his skin, smoke-soft. 

The shadows Luka called to himself seemed to retreat, overtaken by a more overpowering darkness.

Achingly, Luka raised his head. And then cracked the back of his skull on the old stone, blood trickling down the wispy fur on his spine.

Vanessa crept closer, steps singing a cold song across the cellar-water. Luka’s chest constricted impossibly further as she stepped within touching distance, flinching back as her hand loomed closer to his face-

Her touch was deceptively gentle, fingertips brushing dried salt out of the black feather-filaments beneath his eye. “Oh, darling, I missed you too,” Vanessa crooned, sharp like sugar. 

Soft as a whispered threat, she cupped his cheek, and something about the motion conjured the ghost of a similar sensation, a sword-calloused and dirt-ground palm supporting his face. “I made that little adulteress go away, my prince. And even if it’s for your own good, to learn your lesson- well, I never could resist your charms.” Tenderly, her hand swept lower, caressing the ruff of feathers around his neck, lingering there for a moment. “I think we can cheat on the terms a little bit, yes? A celebration, for her death.” 

Vanessa’s cold lips met where his mouth used to be, chaste and sweet, contrasting her fingers as they glided lower, and then lower-

Luka faded back into the shadows. It was easier that way. Like dying would be.

\--

**300 BFC. Day 7 After the Killing Cold.**

Hope, The-Thing-That-Was-Luka decided, was a poisonous thing. Lethal as Death’s clawed thoughts resting at his throat like a drawn blade.

He disposed of the seven-days-dead hope that Vanessa would free him after she realized what a misunderstanding it was. That she would kiss the marks she made with tears and tenderness in her eyes as she apologized for her outbursts- the way she always had, in the past; though the thought of her touch now left him nauseous and dried-out like an infested fruit.

That hope was replaced with rage. 

It clawed out his ribcage until there was nothing left but cobwebs and embers. It walked along his every thought, it lay with him during what wretched hours of rest he could get, it woke every primal part of his brain to scream at the injustice of it all.

For rage was just another word for fear, was it not?

The-Thing-That-Was-Luka was angry and terrified and _starving_ , so hungry for something that he couldn’t identify and so, so lonely, without the forest doing any more than whispering in his ear as it froze to death. As it died so thoroughly that no amount of sacrifices or buried bodies would bring it back to life. 

With one final pulse, a dying nerve-signal from a severed limb, the forest stilled, never to live again. 

Subcon Forest died, but The-Thing-That-Was-Luka did _not_.

The place where his lips used to be ripped open, a poor facsimile of a human mouth lined with night-sharp fangs and backlit by a yellow furnace-glow. No longer drowning in the forest’s death, The-Thing-That-Was-Luka feebly turned his head to the side, facing the frost-rimed iron so embedded into his arms that the black feathers had grown around it. 

It was not as satisfying as sinking his teeth into a bleeding throat would have been, but the iron shrieked and tore all the same. 

The taste of cold rust between his fangs and the tattered ends of two chains rattling against the now-bare cellar wall, The-Thing-That-Was-Luka laid there trembling; a forest fire, wrapped in tree-shadows and dark feathers. It was just him and the cellar, now- the plink of water droplets, the cold he didn’t feel with nerves but felt with his soul, the scrape of his bramble-thorn claws against stone as he strained to stand for the first time in a week.

Instinct writhed in his brain and bade him to run, its demands biting at his heels like winter wolves’ frozen fangs.

Still wobbling on oddly-jointed feet, he groped around for something to cover himself with, as his clothes were gone-

The point of his claws caught on something soft, familiar. He pulled it back, revealing-

Oh. His mantle, dust and frost marring the dark violet fabric and covering the death-yellow stitching. He’s stowed it away down here after he started wearing more Omnecian fashions, once his courtship with the then-princess began. 

The-Thing-That-Was-Luka wrapped the cloak around his shoulders and pulled the hood on, the feathery tufts atop his head showing as odd bumps beneath the wool. 

A three-fingered hand braced against the wall, The-Thing-That-Was-Luka limped out of his prison. He left the crown behind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apolonia didn’t feel like she could handle the responsibility of being the Margravine, and she couldn’t imagine genuinely emotionally caring for so many people she’d never met before, _will_ never meet. _And that’s okay_. Originally I created her to flesh out the Subcon ruling family, since it’s very rare for the heir to be married to a higher-ranking person (Vanessa, in this case), especially since Mama Pryce had 0 intent of fully merging Subcon with Omnoc- quite the opposite, in fact. So Apolonia was originally the heir before she ran. And there are… lots of interactions between Snatcher’s baggage about his family and Hattie’s baggage about hers. 
> 
> Snatcher’s transformation was a physical one. I know the common headcanon is that he kinda ‘fell out’ of his body as a ghost, but here, he didn’t really die. I mean, the prince _did_ kinda die, but in the way someone who was atomized and then put back together dies. Like any Being, he’s a _living_ organism. He’s not a ghost in this au, but he thinks he is for the first 300 years. Easy mistake to make, really- Beings don’t need to breathe either. 
> 
> I didn’t spend a lot of time- any time, really- detailing Luka and Vanessa’s actual relationship in its ‘prime’, and that was kinda on purpose. It’s pretty easy to tell there were some serious red flags from the notes in the manor, but they’re a bit more subtle than the giant red billboard of ‘chaining your fiance in the basement and killing him’, y’know? It’s the more subtle mental stuff like gaslighting and guilt tripping and controlling behavior that makes me squeamish, for uh reasons. 
> 
> I think he did love her. Dearly. He just wasn’t _in love_ with her (Aroace prince/snatcher? Good headcanon). She certainly loved him, but it has little bearing- it doesn’t matter what the reasoning or intent behind it is, abusive behavior is inexcusable. (Also? Excuse vs reason? Different things. Very very different things.)
> 
> While on the topic, I have a Lot of thonks on Vanessa and her mother that don’t really align with common fanon, like at all, but it’s way too long to stick in a a/n so I made a post for it [here](https://banyanas.tumblr.com/post/632814289087086592/so-since-the-entire-fic-is-finished-or-at-least)  
> (warning for some talk of domestic abuse, but it’s very vague)
> 
> And then here, a kind of essay about why Snatcher never looked for Apolonia after his death: [link](https://banyanas.tumblr.com/post/640157627686469632/why-didnt-snatcher-ever-visit-his-sister-in)  
> (some spoilers for this chapter there)


	4. Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a whole, this fic has been very unlike Soul-Stricken. Both for the slightly darker content and the style- there’s a lot of skipping around to relevant scenes, leaving the reader to fill in some gaps by themselves. And in general I’ll admit it isn’t my best work, prose-wise or story-wise, but it’s good practice and it was fun to write so that’s what matters.
> 
> So! Whatever kind of entity Subcon Forest was, I’d like to make it clear it’s mega-dead. But Snatcher is a Being, so Subcon still being his domain and territory _means_ something. Domains are inextricably linked to Beings, after all. (And it makes every hypothesis of the pre-chapter excerpt true, in some way).
> 
> And finally, and more mundanely, the boattail-bird mentioned is essentially a great-tailed grackle. Their calls are _wild_ sounding.

** The Magic Boom of 1057 (Omnecian Calendar) **

_Twenty years after the fall of Subcon and the end of the Paracos dynasty, natural magic became far more common, throughout all Earth’s native species. While previously, there were known pockets of the world where magic was more common- sea mages on the Mustachipelago, verdant mages in Subcon Forest, wind mages at Alpine Skyline, and ice mages in the Omnoc ruling class- it is now far more widespread, and not limited to certain magic-heavy geographical locations._

_There were precious few instruments built to reliably measure large-scale magic levels, and thus the origin of the boom remains shrouded in mystery. Magic is a cycled resource, like water and air- with this known as fact, the majority of scholars agree that there was some great release of magic a few years before the event. Anywhere from five to thirty years is estimated, as it does take time for ambient magic to return to a mutable form born into new children._

_Perhaps the magic was released from a huge cache. Perhaps some great beast of enormous magic died. Perhaps, more disturbingly, a truly huge amount of natural mages may have perished all at once._

_-Brigid Larsen_

\--

The-Thing-That-Was-Luka saw the sky for the first time in seven days.

He breathed in the night, fresh air passing through his fangs and into a fire-core that did not need to breathe but habit forced to anyways. Then, with one last look at the manor, still lit with candlelight on the top floors, he stalked away, fisting his coak closed around him. 

His mind was still silent but for his own thoughts, his own sensations, his own shivers as blade-cold winds bit into his skin and ruffled his feathers. No, Subcon Forest was truly dead, leaving its last living conduit adrift. 

So dissociated from his own body, The-Thing-That-Was-Luka was only slammed back into the present as he tripped, palms slapping into the snow. 

He looked back.

An ice-sheathed corpse stared back, expression hidden by the skunk-mask it wore. A mask. A _child_.

The-Thing-That-Was-Luka scrambled back in a horrified crabwalk, banging his head into another chill surface. 

Almost pleading, with himself and with the dead Subconite and with the dead forest, he turned around and dug his talons into the upright ice’s surface; he would shatter the corpse out of its ice-coffin, give it the proper rites and give it back to the earth for the-

Subcon Forest was dead. It did not eat anymore, and it did not bless the hands that fed it.

He let go, leaving punctures in the ice, and swept his gaze outward. Inconspicuous lumps, oddly human-sized protrusions, empty houses standing on an empty land’s corpse-

The-Thing-That-Was-Luka was not capable of vomiting anymore. But he thought if he could, it would feel like this, choking on horror and fire and curling himself against the world beneath his cloak. 

Something prodded his shoulder, and he bristled his feathers and hissed, threatening, before swiping his claws at the intruder. Sitting up, he called fire to his hands and to his throat-

Stopped. Extinguished it. Stared openly at the creature before him. Snakelike and green, long as he was tall, it gazed at him with eerie eyes and no face and a long mane of glittering vine-strands. And it was most certainly dead.

Frozen in a way beyond the ever-present cold, The-Thing-That-Was-Luka watched as it (she?) inched closer- she was oddly familiar, like a scent remembered but not known. 

He understood, when her tail curled around his finger. 

< _Friend-love-dead. Failure. Friend. Guilt. I was there I’m_ sorry- >

Camellia snaked around him, his head tucked under the crook of hers, and clung to him, muttering thought-apologies as he cried into her. The memories and images and feelings bled into him like a reel of silk paintings, and The-Thing-That-Was-Luka burned with his own guilt, because she’d _died_ trying to save him and he didn’t even have the decency to let her succeed- he was long-dead too. Had to be, after a week with no water and no food and no air.

< _Rebuke, my decision, stop that!_ > Camellia admonished, pulling away. < Not _thing-that-was. Thing-that-_ is _. Luka. Friend, dead but not gone._ >

The-Thing-That-Is-Luka shuddered and sighed, pressing his strange hands into his face. _Coward_ , he thought. Running away by pretending he was a husk, left behind. Husks didn’t have loved ones. They didn’t feel pain. 

Husks didn’t have responsibilities. Like Luka still did, even in death, as all the icebound souls lit up in his senses. 

The least he could do was bring them home. Or where their home used to be.

Calling each sleepy soul to him was _easy_ , like casting a net of sparks and drawing the school of little ghosts to him.

(And some of them were _so_ little. Like holding a baby swamp-gator, young and trusting and nosing into his feathers and seeking the fire-warmth from his core.)

The last of the Dead-But-Still-Dwelling spirits drifted towards him, and every soul around him sparked and glitched as an enraged howl tore from the manor, like a knife keening over ice. 

The bleeding silence was broken by Luka’s sweeping, attention-grabbing gestures, and he cut off mid-pointing to gather the smallest Dwellers into his arms. 

They all understood. They ran, flew, swam across the barren icefield towards the forest’s corpse, across the bridge and under the trees.

(Hundreds of miles away, a living entourage mirrored their dead members, migrating east across cloud-piercing mountains and winding valleys.

They were greeted in Fairview, the town below the Skyline, with great confusion, and clamored for the only living Clan Head- the Margrave’s daughter, who ran from the crushing weight of her responsibilities to her people but never escaped them. 

Apolonia and her spouse sorted through the surviving Subconites, recording names and clan ties and members in need of medical attention.

When there were no more migrants to greet or reassure or guide, no more names to write down and bind to remaining clan members, Apolonia allowed herself to weep.

Her brother was not there. She abandoned him to his death.)

\--

Luka stood before the heart-tree, lava-heat rising from his core.

The heart-tree was barren. Rotted and frozen through, like looking at his own corpse.

Luka skidded over the frozen pool, colliding with the tree and digging his claws into it. He forced his consciousness into it, pried it open like a freshwater oyster only to find _nothing_. Like a lightning-mage attempting to shock a long-dead corpse back to life, he pushed his magic and his mind and his soul further into Subcon’s heart, and-

Like a volcano’s eruption, all that power hissed free, snow-soft and steaming.

Then, there was fire. And _only_ fire.

Luka blinked, head pounding and senses spinning, at the dead canopy above him. In the direction he’d been facing as he shoved his magic into the forest, the trees burned in a vast swath, crackling and spitting like an enraged beast.

 _… Oops_.

Hesitantly, he signaled the forest, like he had ever since he was young.

No response. Subcon Forest was lifeless as ashes.

Luka let his head slump back into the leaf litter, resisting the urge to groan as the Dwellers crowded around him curiously. They’d been unharmed in the explosion, thankfully. He still felt painfully empty, a carved-out ribcage of cinders and burning coal-veins of lonely-angry-terrified, but they reminded him he couldn’t lie down and move on yet. 

Hundreds of children, now wards of Clan Pryce, with only two adults and one Clan Head to act as guardians. 

Yes- yes, exactly. He had things he _needed_ to do. Children to arm with bodies to interact with the world, and blades to substitute for fangs that he had but they lacked. A bridge to destroy, cutting the queen off from his territory. Markers to claw into stone and tree-trunks, hunting grounds to establish.

Yes. He could do this. He could do all this, and ignore the yawning gulf of hunger in his gut. 

\--

The bridge was destroyed, first. It was, however, not planned.

Luka and Camellia raided a home for ink and parchment, recording all the names and clan affiliations of the Dwellers- name-ties were _important_ , especially for children- when he froze, swivelling his head like an owl scoping sounds.

Cold, like ice-needles dancing across his fingertips. But it wasn’t a frigid blizzard-wind shearing through his wispy feathers. It was _something_ at the forest’s border, rime-scars on stone somehow getting even _colder-_

Vanessa. It had to be. And Luka could not consider _how_ he knew she was approaching the canyon-border, because all he felt in that moment was a thrill of perfect and utter terror.

But he couldn’t run. He _wanted_ to, wanted to run even from the things he _couldn’t_ leave behind- the scars on his arms, the stretched pain in his shoulders, the shriveling hunger that still will not release him, even in death. If he ran, he would fail to leave those pains behind, and he would leave behind the bodiless Dwellers, and Camellia, and his territory, and his purpose.. 

He was not a born warrior, not like Apolonia or Camellia were. Luka was not a young Subcon warlord cutting his teeth on a neighboring clan. He was a cornered wolf, fur matted with his own blood and with no need for manmade weapons.

A cornered wolf did not allow threats. It _ended_ them.

(And there was nothing in the known world more dangerous than a cornered Being.)

\--

Luka tore through the forest toward the bridge, claws curled out and flames behind his fangs and wordless steam-shrieks rattling from his throat, like a hissing snake. 

He arrived just as frost spiralled out from her feet across the flagstones- a flame-torn sentinel guarding against a lone human, his mind slashed and scattered with the shapes and shadow-motion of rage-fear-love-threat-threat- _threat_ -

Vanessa stopped, lank hair swaying as she tilted her head. She prowled one step closer, black diamond-dust drifting in her wake. “That cloak…” Her eyes narrowed, furious. “You! You steal my beloved from his room, you steal even his cloak, and you have the gall to think you can stand in my way?” Another step, needles of ice flanking her like poised lances. “Are you one of the Margravine’s saboteurs? Here to undermine my rule and steal my prince into your woods?” 

Anger blazed from his heart to his throat to the licks of fire expelled with every enraged breath. How dare she!

With every one of the queen’s steps, Luka’s feathers bristled further, and he flared his cloak out like an eagle-owl. His threat display did nothing to dissuade Vanessa, and as she approached the bridge, the fire inside his core churned like a storm-swept ocean, all the power of a continent condensed to a single point.

Luka called to it, and it came. The frost-brittle bridge shattered under the firestorm, thundering and screaming like a dying volcano. 

Vanessa wavered on the other side of the yawning canyon, reflexes and ice magic the only thing that kept her from facing a similar fate as the bridge. 

She turned and ran, leaving Luka to collapse to his hands and knees, filled with fear-of and fear-for and _hatred_ for Vanessa, filled with the jaw-snapping satisfaction of _territory defended, victory over competitor and thief_. 

_Everything_ of Subcon Forest was his, and he would not tolerate those who would steal territory, steal prey, steal his wards from him. 

Purpose cloaked over him like a shroud, Luka returned to where his Dwellers huddled by the heart-tree.

\--

As the only one that could truly interact with the physical world, making the bodies for his clan-wards fell to Luka. 

His first attempts were poor, quilted together from the closets of frozen homes and phantom-poplar fluff. As he coaxed the first of the children to slither into the vaguely-humanoid vessel, the back of his neck prickled.

Halfheartedly, he glared at Camellia, who managed to look judgemental despite not having a face to express herself with. “What? It’s not like there’s many options, here.”

The glittering motes in her body sparkled as she shook her head, despondent at his poor needlework, and turned tail, venturing off to do… something. 

“It’s okay, my lord,” The vessel beside him said, now inhabited by what used to be a fifteen-year-old. “I’m just happy to have hands again, really.” They waved about their stubby arms, demonstrating their point. 

Luka continued creating plush vessels, sewing thorn-runes and simple thread-mazes into the fabric, knowing a little extra protection couldn’t hurt, even if the children had no bodies for horizon-spirits to steal. 

He froze, hackles rising. _I’m being watched_.

Pressure. Displacement. The faint thorn-rasp of foliage on stone. 

Without looking back, Luka pitched his voice to carry. “Camellia. I know it’s you.”

The shuffle of granite feet on leaf-litter was more embarrassed, now, as Camellia emerged from the bushes. “Aw, c’mon, you won’t even let me test out the new body?” She wheedled, flexing her stone fingers. One of the headless statues, then, scavenged from some rich Omnecian’s garden. 

Luka arched a nonexistent brow, taking in the pair of swords at her side and the cloak she wore- it gave her an eerie countenance, shrouding her lack-of-head in unnatural darkness, leaving only two red eyes glowing under the cowl. “Did you... “

“It’s not stealing if it’s from your own corpse,” Camellia said, almost prim. Crossed her arms, daring him to call her out. “There’s not even too many bloodstains. And I would rather have a vessel that cannot be so easily destroyed, thank you.”

She was most certainly not dealing with her death as well as she thought he was. But Luka didn’t bring attention to it. “So be it.”

“It does feel weird to be unarmed…” Another plush vessel muttered, lantern-blank face swirling. Understandable, as this particular girl had died when she was seventeen, certainly old enough to be carrying her own weapons. “Say, Lord Luka, if the vessels get damaged, it doesn’t hurt, does it?” 

“No, it shouldn’t. You can’t feel temperature, nor do you bleed.” He answered, uncomfortably aware of the very real, very solid sensations _he_ felt. Touch, and scent, and an odd colorless patina overlayed across his vision, shifting and intensifying like an invisible oil spill.

“ _Yes_ ,” she muttered, devious. “I can fit _so_ many knives on me.” And before he could protest, she scampered away, in search of the desired weaponry. 

Camellia cackled like a boattail-bird, overpowering Luka’s faint groan as he pressed his face into three-fingered hands. “She’s going to replace half her stuffing with blades, isn’t she?”

(Three hundred and fifty Subconite vessels later, Camellia asked how Luka knew where she was. 

The truth was that he didn’t know. That it was almost as if the forest was nearly alive again, if numbed, yet there was no consciousness behind it. No consciousness besides his own, anyway.

If he was a ghost, Luka thought privately, perhaps the vessel he possessed was Subcon Forest’s corpse. The thought was as uncomfortable as it was comforting.)

\--

With word of Subcon’s fall came scavengers.

Not scavengers of the noble sort- vultures or bush-coyotes or knowledge-seekers. But the greedy sort, looters who stripped the value from graveyards like locusts from a field, selling ‘rare artifacts’ to the highest bidder. 

Most of the young relics of _this_ dying realm were clustered at the center, rummaging through thawed houses and scavenging from their past lives. The dead had been buried; a warm, frozen-iron weight beneath the soil, slowly feeding into the forest (or into Luka, perhaps) with a blood-tang lingering behind his throat. 

What drew Luka to the border was not so benign, however. Oh, these people were _also_ dead already, most certainly.

Unlike the Dwellers, these new humans just didn’t know it yet.

Luka had forgone his cloak, his dark feathers the perfect camouflage that allowed him to sink into the tree-shadows. Perched in a tree, he tilted his head to and fro, funnelling the sound of the invaders to his ears and tracking their movement- he kept his eyes closed instinctively, lest they see his poison-gold eyes glowing in the dark. 

One looter stopped just behind his tree-perch, hand on the pommel of her sword, wary. Without thinking, Luka took a shallow, open-mouthed breath, drawing in the scent of unspilled blood and an odd undercurrent of almost-magic, as if each dormant magical signature had a smell of its own.

The instinct that drove Luka to defend his territory _changed_ when he saw the thieves. The urge to confront them directly, to shriek and hiss and snap his fangs, to bristle his feathers out to appear larger, was replaced with hunger. And _stalking_ , smoke-soft and predatory.

Acting on the ancient instinct of the hunted, the woman looked up.

Luka swooped, hind talons-first, down from the tree.

A gurgling gasp, hooked claws meeting resistance as they scraped bone. 

The hired sword collapsed beneath him, spine severed and dead before she hit the ground.

The person ahead of him jumped, pointing their spear at the blood-black specter looming over their colleague. Ex-colleague, rather. “Shit- Kala!”

Luka bunched his legs beneath him, taut as a bowstring-

A snap-crunch behind him. The silvery rasp of steel on oiled leather. 

Luka whirled around to face the human behind him, prey wasn’t _supposed_ to bite _back_ -

 _Thunk_.

Startled by the sword currently impaled in his gut, Luka looked up, astonished, his expression mirrored by a man whose face was pale as an execution warrant. “You…” Luka trailed off, grasping at the blade emerging from his feathers. 

Alarmed by the monster before him _speaking_ , the thief thrust the sword in further, hilt pressed flush against Luka’s skin. 

It also brought the thief closer to him, and Luka lunged, void-sharp fangs sinking into flesh like clay, red bubbles gurgling at his jaws as the man wheezed for breath through a torn throat. 

By the time the body beneath him stopped kicking, the last looter was gone. Gone from Luka’s sight, and from the forest- no life-heat or heartbeats to be sensed, only the fresh footprints of a panicked human fleeing the forest.

They were the lucky one. Camellia was at the border by now, and she was a far deadlier warrior than he.

He turned his attention back to the corpse, almost-delicately unhooking his fangs from the man’s throat, and almost choked when something slithered out with his teeth. 

He fumbled with it, and looked down at the thing- the _soul_ \- cradled in his claws- a silence-colored glow, pulsating gently and setting the ends of his nerves alight with a hunger he hadn’t felt since the days in Vanessa’s-

Luka cut the thought off ruthlessly, instead cautiously sniffing at the glow. This close to his face, it was impossible to resist closing his eyes (and _oh_ , wasn’t that strange, seeing through his mouth the same way he could his eyes, as if all his senses had merged into one, peeking through the gaps of blackbriar and shadow) and bringing the soul to his maw.

It didn’t taste like anything, but as the soul burned in the wildfire-core of his gut, Luka was mildly, distantly horrified. He’d eaten a _soul_ , cut it off from the reincarnation cycle fully and completely. And yet, the crushing weight of satisfaction was stronger- the need to eat and grow, the victory of a successful hunt. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he acknowledged he should, by all rights, _not_ be so disturbingly okay with this. But hunger was a powerful motivator, and if even a slow death couldn’t truly kill him, nothing else would. Especially not his own inaction, not when his food would come _to_ him.

(Word of a beast in the old Subcon Forest spread like a flock of warblers calling to one another. Some took it for the warning that it was, moving further away from the dead kingdom’s borders. Others took it as a challenge- a mythical dragon roosting over a storied treasure hoard, whom if slain would bestow upon the hunters untold riches. Some were driven by curiosity, and their dedication to academia. Nobles from the fractured lands of Omnoc sent patrols to retake the errant, dilapidated Margravate, armed with blades and alchemy.

Regardless, none who entered ever re-emerged. And memory of the Subcon Margravate faded, one more fall of a country among many throughout history. A poisoned land that slew any who trespassed- even the cameras strapped to buggies and remotely driven inside. 

But Subcon still lived on- both through the strange beast and his ghost-wards, and through the people, scattered and _alive_ , memory and tradition passed down through three centuries of displacement.

And before this, mere years after the Margravate’s fall, a town-guard-turned-clan-head carved her third funerary plaque, after her parents’- her chipped writing was wobbly and unpracticed, but each of the well-wishes and remembrance-runes embedded into the stone were carved with the utmost care. The first gravestone-plaques, for their tattered and nearly-extinguished clan’s family shrine.

In that same year, she named her fourth child Luka.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooo boy, lots of guilt to go around- Luka for Cam’s death, Cam for _his_ death, Apolonia for running away and for (what she thinks is) her brother’s death. The arrival of the Subconite remnants to Fairview is something I’d considered writing, but since it would quite literally be All Ocs, I opted not to. The main point was giving the Prince a living family branch (Larsen would be a familiar last name to those of you who read Soul Stricken, eh?), and the point of Apolonia’s abandoned responsibilities literally following her. 
> 
> The thing with Camellia waiting on the border to slit the third thief’s throat? Yeah Cam is not handling this stuff very healthily. But Snowl, bless his nonexistent Being heart, sees her with her trauma-born anger and 'murder is the first and best option to protect myself always' attitude and thinks 'yeah thats fine and normal'. What’s psychologically healthy for a human and for a Being is... very different, let’s say. The results of their good ole traumatic experiences present themselves in different ways, and some of those ways might be natural/not harmful coping mechanisms (though they both certainly have very negative coping methods, just in different ways) for one but not the other.
> 
> Anyways! Fitting in with the overall darker tone of this fic (which is fun, but I’m gonna be happy to get back to the usual vibes of this ‘verse), Itty Baby Being Snince Kills A Man™. And on that topic, even though I think herbivores are a million times scarier than carnivores, it’s important to remember that this particular subgroup of Beings are apex predators. They hunt, and nothing hunts them. And predatory animals do have a sense of violence about them, yes. That’s not a bad thing- nature just be like that. He definitely deserves to be judged for a lot of things (playing with your food, really Snatcher? Deciding children are also still on the menu? There’s gotta be lines in the sand, my dude), but eating souls on its own isn’t one of them. The coyote eats your outdoor cat, the cat hunts the bird, and the bird eats the surfacing worms. Snatcher eats souls. You don’t tell the coyote or the cat or the bird or the Snatcher to just stop hunting. That’s life, everyone’s gotta eat. 
> 
> (It also makes Hat Kid’s casual bullying of him way more funny in contrast)
> 
> ALSO THERE IS FANART! By tuusenarts because he’s Very Cool [Link](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/780495363382575117/780536467822608455/stop_cryng_ur_so_sexy.png)  
> [tumblr](https://banyanas.tumblr.com/tagged/get-along-hat)  
> edit: and even MORE fanart this one made me lose my shit ngl https://abstractbabble.tumblr.com/post/641527505543643136/in-summery-i-really-liked-banyanas-a-hat-in


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